POWER POINT: BEYOND DARWIN

BEYOND DARWIN!

Here's a novel thought: instead of being taught as mindless, slavish dogma, evolutionary biologists have been busy in the last 150 years. They've been testing, retesting, modifying and in some cases rejecting aspects of Darwin's theory. This Power Point explains some of the major innovations, which (by the way) are all in the textbook:


Students who need to download the Power Point to complete their notes, and the Lecture Guide based on it, can do so here.


We've just finished these notes, and many of these ideas are important in some of the potential essay topics that students should already be working on, so those students especially will want to get up to speed. Students will receive a Lecture Guide based upon these notes TODAY!

BEYOND DARWIN

You can get the Power Point by clicking here!

DOWN THE HOME STRETCH

Students received a Syllabus today for our final unit of the year:

UNIT 10: BEYOND DARWIN: EVOLUTION, OURSELVES

As the name suggests, we will be going beyond the basics of evolution and natural selection studied in Unit 9. The most important task for all students in this final unit will be the completion of drafts of an Essay based upon a topic chosen by students, with a matching scoring rubric.

This Essay has the following goals:

• allowing students to pursue and investigate a topic in evolutionary theory, and (if they desire) exploring other points of view where that topic is concerned

• rehearsing some of the skills required for college papers (appropriate use of sources, APA-style bibliography and citations)

• giving students opportunity to write, and re-write, multiple drafts...the key to good writing, as with so many things, is skill rehearsal

• providing a structured assignment that rewards a high level of achievement with a significant number of points at the end of the semester, in effect a vehicle for students who want a meaningful opportunity to raise their grade.

I encourage students and parents to discuss the benefits and challenges of this assignment. First drafts should've been already submitted in writing or attached to an email:

(epigene13@hotmail.com).

They should be submitted either as Word documents or as PDF files.